Chris Miller writes:

> I have a customer that wants to set up their own network of PCs with
>  their 3000.  They want to do it on their own rather than having someone
>  do it for them, and I was wondering where to tell them to look.
>
>  Is there an easy step by step book/manual/web page, etc. that I can
>  point them too that walks them through the process.  Or if there is
>  something I could reference that I could put together for them.  I
>  searched the archives, but never found a complete answer.  Thanks in
>  advance.

As it occurs, this step-by-step, how-to-setup-your-own-network is something
I've been meaning to put up for some time now on the web. Unfortunately, the
time just hasn't been available up to now.

Our goal has been to develop a model TCP/IP-based network for small to medium
customers, one that requires no switches, routers or network operating
system, using the simplest possible components. Things have finally gotten
simple enough where it's now possible to set up really nice networks, with a
minimum of fuss -- but you don't want to do the way Microsoft wants you to do
it, with file sharing and printer sharing, using an NT or Novell server.
There's just no reason nowadays to make a network that complex.

The first great trick is to assign hard-coded IP addresses to all of your
devices (printers, HP3000s, and PCs) in some organized fashion. Moreover, you
will almost certainly want to use Private Address Space IP addresses. For
more information on these non-routable, internal-to-your-company-only
addresses, please see:

     http://www-europe.cisco.com/warp/public/701/35.html

Do this, and the battle's half won (and this step isn't even particularly
difficult).

In our instance, for our own usage, a schema of our LAN, which is a little
out of date now (the LAN now reaches into four buildings and a Cisco router
now attaches the LAN to the internet through a fractional T1 frame-relay
circuit), please see:

     http://aics-research.com/qc/schema.html

The next logical step is to configure your HP3000 using NMMGR to assign it an
IP address. Once that's done, turn telnet and/or NS/VT on so that your
terminals can communicate with the HP3000, over the LAN, using any of the
standard terminal emulators.

The next step is to configure network printing, so that the HP3000 can print
to the IP addresses you've assigned to your printers. Complete instructions
(more than complete actually) are found at:

     http://docs.hp.com/cgi-bin/doc3k/B3265090848.16170/1

Chapter 3 is the chapter of interest.

The final step is to recreate the same sort of TCP/IP-based printing within
your PCs that the HP3000 uses. To do that, you will want to download a copy
of JetAdmin from the HP web site. The URL for this free bit of software is:

     http://www.hp.com/cposupport/networking/software/ja115ge.exe.html

This is the URL for Windows 95/98. If you need JetAdmin for other operating
systems, simply follow the appropriate links.

This final step can be a little confusing, especially if you have your PC's
set up for other, earlier network printing schemes or are using older
versions of HP's JetAdmin software. A few of the trials and tribulations you
can run into are outlined in a posting I made last October:

     http://www.optc.com/Webbot/Thread8234.html

However, if you start fresh and are careful, setting up JetAdmin
PC-direct-to-IP-based-printing is really quite easy, so don't be put off by
the contents of the posting.

That's it. You now have a fully functional network that will be surprisingly
fast -- and exceptionally easy to manage.

Wirt Atmar